I chronicle nonsense, mostly about the news, sometimes about pop culture. If you don't think it's nonsensical, then yell at me in the comments.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Would There Be More Coverage if R. Kelly Assaulted A White Girl?

I never liked
R. Kelly. I was not there for Public Announcement. I wasn’t a fan of 12Play. I didn’t believe his 2-week
stint that he promised to go “clean and do gospel”, and I was not surprised
that the year after “I Believe I Can Fly” he sang chorus, “I’m fucking you
tonight”. The line, “My mind is telling me, ‘No’, but my body is telling me, ‘Yes’”,
always rubbed me the wrong way. It sounded a little rapey, and that was before
I had any inkling of rape culture. I was ankh-right; I was part of the problem,
yet I STILL knew there was something wrong with a little “Bump n’ Grind” in
this situation. While others laughed at the “Trapped in the Closet” series, I
watched and disliked every tired trope he doled out in the name of “artistic
expression”. And that is all just what he did in the studio! I didn’t
understand why people signed off on his inappropriate relationship with
Aaliyah, the pee video, the botched trial, and now this report of a “sex cult”
where he imprisoned young women who he promised guidance.

I know that
some will allege that this new news about R. Kelly is just a conspiracy to “take
down another prominent black man”. Right, perhaps he and Chris Brown tried to
buy NBC with Bill Cosby. There is more than enough evidence to take R. Kelly
down, some that he produced himself, if we cared about victims of sexual
assault enough. Caping for people who don’t give a damn about anyone but
themselves doesn’t help anything. The Struggle
will be better off without them. If you’re defending or ignoring R. Kelly’s
actions because you just REALLY like his music, you are the worst. This means
that your personal entertainment is more important to you than his victims’
lives. The entertainment industry is banking on that, and you are buying into
it. Just admit that you are as soulless as them, and move one.

While reading
about R. Kelly’s latest news, I also am reading about Justine Damond, who was
killed by Minneapolis police after SHE called 911 about a disturbance. She was
an Australian expat who was going to be married in August. She was so excited
about it that she had already gone by her husband-to-be’s family name. Exactly
what potential threat does an unarmed yoga instructor in a robe pose that she
needed to be lethally dispatched at point blank range? People are up in arms
about this. They are incensed that this could happen…in the same city that
ju8st acquitted Philando Castile’s killer and gave him $48,500 to resign from
the police force. Since we’re just hearing about Damond’s case, there is no
telling whether a jury will convict the officer who shot her, and there is no body
or dash camera footage to submit as evidence. Judging by the uproar so far,
from all angles, it seems that paid administrative leave will turn to unpaid
jail time.

This kind of hints
at what I’ve been thinking for years: America is not going to give a damn until
a pretty white woman is involved. It looks like it took pretty white woman for
people to take police practices and violence seriously. I am not surprised.
When I think about people who have done things with impunity, they hadn’t done
what they did to any pretty white women. Chris Brown not only served laughable
time for abusing Rihanna, but also his industry welcomed him back with open
arms, and he has had subsequent success, and he hasn’t changed at all. The
vitriol he spits at women online is disgusting, and the case in which he
threatened death on Karreuche Tran so much that she filed for a permanent
restraining order shows how little he has grown as a person. Just looking at
missing persons case, black people make up nearly 33% of the cases, even though
we are only 13% of the population. Last year, dozens of girls of color went
missing in the Mid-Atlantic, but there was barely a line in the news about it
until months later. The second a pretty white woman goes missing for 6 hours,
the FBI is called in. So is this all proof that had R. Kelly peed on a pretty
white girl, he’d be in jail right now, and unable to start a sex cult/prison?

NOOOOPE.
America doesn’t give a damn about women at all. Brock Turner is white, and he
assaulted a pretty white woman, and after serving 3 months, 1.8% of the
potential jail time he could have served, he is out free. Nate Parker, a black
man, “allegedly” assaulted a white woman in college, was acquitted, and he still
managed to carve out a pretty successful acting and directing career for
himself. I haven’t heard much from him this year, but I doubt we’ve heard the
last of him. Sadly, she took her own life. Nearly around the time that Brock
turner was about to leave jail, David Becker was given probation for assaulting
two women. Nicholas Fifield forced himself on a mentally handicapped woman, but
the DA thought that prison wouldn’t do him any good. A judge gave a man who
raped his 12-year old daughter a suspended sentence and allowed him to serve
the 60 days of jail time over the course of 6 months. So it was like weekend
camp for him. If you think this is just a case of some judges gone misogyny
wild, remember that Eminem made a multiplatinum career out of joyfully
discussing maiming, raping, and killing everyone from random pop stars he just
doesn’t like to his own ex-wife, the mother of his daughter. Bill Cosby is
still roaming free, and a good chunk of his accusers are white. It IS an odd
coincidence that he got a very ambiguous trial outcome, and at least for me,
Andrea Constand is ethnically ambiguous. However, not giving a damn about women is
ubiquitous in this country. We talk a good game about caring, but we really don’t
give a damn.

I realize it
was common for black men to be lynched for so much as looking at white women.
Sometimes the white woman in question never existed. This is definitely not the
case here, and don’t think that this is proof that that America holds such an affinity
to white women as to put them on a pedestal and protect them like they are
Faberge eggs and black men are jewel-hungry foxes. America only uses white
women to push a narrative that black men are craven monsters. We’ve been
fridging white women since before Gail Simone coined the term “Women in
Refrigerators”. Judging by the lack of rape convictions, the rollbacks in women's health care funding, and who is running the country, I don't think that sad truth will slow down in at least the next 4 years.